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System 7 Sounds on Mac OS X

Mac OS 7 (1991) stored sounds in the resource fork of files or applications. Back then you could use ResEdit to access them.
File Juicer extracts sound resources into one sound per file, and you can listen to the extracted sounds in Finder. Finder's "Column View" is the most convenient if you have many sounds.

File Juicer 4.36 (not newer versions as they use QuickTime X which does not support this) also creates a QuickTime version of the same sound, without reencoding to preserve the quality.

Convert and Organize Sounds with iTunes

Sounds in the resource format (of type 'sfil') used before Mac OS X are no longer the most convenient format. To convert the sounds to AIFF, which has much better support by MacOS X (Mail, Alert Sounds etc), you can switch iTunes import preference to AIFF, drag the QuickTime version of the sounds (made by File Juicer 4) into your library and convert them in this way. After the import you can drag the sounds back out to the Desktop or into your Library > Sounds folder, where Mac OS X will recognize them as system sounds.

Remember to switch the import setting back to your regular setting after converting the sounds!

Converting Sounds to AIFF with Automator

If you have Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" you can use this iTunes Import As AIFF "droplet" application to import into iTunes without the need to adjusting your preferences. It imports the sounds into an Album called "AIFF Imports" so you can easyly find the imported sounds in one place.

You can open the "iTunes Import As AIFF" application with Automator to see how it works, and change the Album title if you desire.